‘It’s not that I’m not good at goodbyes,’ Cat said aloud, tripping over cables as she tried to avoid the crowds by choosing a taxing short cut through the battalion of radio and TV vans, ‘it’s just I’m not sure what I am saying goodbye to.’

‘Cat.’

Cat McCabe stands rooted to the spot.

‘Hullo, Cat.’

Her jaw drops and in her mind’s eye, the past three weeks shrink rapidly into a tiny ball which is bouncing away, out of sight. Away. And fast. Catch it!

‘How’s things?’

A man stands before her. Tall. Broad. Relatively good-looking. Objectively speaking. If he’s your type. Or Cat’s type. It is He Who No Longer Exists. But he obviously does exist as he is here, in the flesh, standing in front of Cat, in Paris.

‘Hullo,’ he says again.

Still Cat is speechless. And there is no Josh, no Alex, no Rachel, no Ben, no one remotely near to sense her distress and come to her rescue.

‘What are you doing here?’ she gasps at last, hating her voice, hating the moment, wishing she’d stayed in the salle de pressé, wishing she’d never come to the Tour de France, wishing He Who Is Standing In Front Of Her, wasn’t.

‘I was the one who kindled your interest in cycling, remember,’ he says lightly. ‘I came to watch the race. The grand finale. I came to find you.’

‘Me?’ Cat says, wondering if he’s really here or whether this is some bizarre apparition, and if he really is here, does that mean perhaps the last three weeks never really existed? Was she really a part of the Tour de France?

‘Can we talk?’ he is saying.

‘About?’ Cat asks, her eyes flitting around, still seeing no point of reference, no known saviour (and, at a time like this, even Jan Airie would do) anywhere in the vicinity. She is cursing herself that, without her entourage, she suddenly feels so small and timid. Exactly as she was just under a month ago.

‘Well,’ he says, his voice known so well but making her chill as so often it did, ‘I’m glad I came across you.’

Cat’s eyes are trained on a large screen relaying pictures of the peloton live.

There’s Stefano and Carlos and Vasily, the maillot vert, the maillot à pois, the maillot jaune, riding amicably side by side just ahead of the bunch, chatting to the Tour’s director Jean Marie LeBlanc who’s handing them a glass of champagne from the window of his red Fiat. See them each have a celebratory if abstemious sip. In the 1960s, when the Tour passed through towns, the riders would leap from their bikes and rampage through bars, grabbing people’s drinks regardless of what they were, food from plates, anything that could be eaten or imbibed. It was an honour to have a Tour cyclist snatch your refreshments. The bar owners would then send the bills to the Tour organizers. Shit, but I’m going off on dreamy tangents to escape from the situation in hand. That He is here. Fuck, I’ve capitalized him. I’d rather watch the big screen though.